Alright, so now that I’ve caught you all up on my past summer, fall, and crazy ayahuasca experience…
(Start here if you need to get caught up on this recent series of blog posts)
What has been happening with me since then?
So we went to Peru and did our ayahuasca ceremonies in early December 2015, and now it’s nearly April.
After ayahuasca, we continued on traveling for another six weeks or so, through Bolivia and Northern Chile.
During my travels, I was well aware of what I learned during ayahuasca… basically, when stuff sucks, stop resisting, breathe in, and then let it all go.
But, I mean.. I was traveling. Everything was going well. We were seeing new things every day. It was exciting.
Havin’ a good time
It’s hard to practice this stuff when things are going well. I was keen to almost leave my ayahuasca experience behind and just forget all about it. Who needs it?
But Home Was a Different Story…
Then we come home.
And home starts triggering things in me.
Home was where, before we went to South America, I was very lonely, bored, and frustrated.
Things were getting better now situationally – Luke was home with me, and everything was great with the two of us. I was feeling re-invigorated by The Love Vitamin, sharing all these recent truth vomit blog posts.
But I was still pretty lonely beyond him. We still didn’t really have any close friends in town, and the rainy greyness of winter on the west coast will always get to me as well.
Suddenly, I got into this pattern where every evening – about two or three hours before bed, and continuing on to bedtime – I start having this bout of pure, generalized anxiety. This is something I had never really experienced before, not like this.
And it was like clock work every night.
Suddenly I would have a random, terrible thought.
Luke dying. A huge earthquake. Getting cancer. Being really old and immobile and alone was a common one.
And then a dark scary awful feeling would come over me, reminiscent of my ayahuasca experience. Like being inside a cave that’s caving in on you.
The dark tunnel of your mind
Oh Brother…
I don’t know why this was happening, really.
At first, I wanted to be angry, feeling like … great, wasn’t ayahuasca supposed to make you feel better? I’m worse off than I was before!
And normally, in reaction to something like that, I would probably immediately want to go do one or all of the following things:
- Decide there was something ‘not right’ about the feeling of our house, and that I wanted to move, thinking that a change in environment would stop the bad feelings
- Get on the internet and obsessively read everything I could about how to get rid of anxiety, and try everything to make it go away
- Start freaking out every time I felt the anxiety come on, and insist on emotionally resisting it with all my might. And make myself even more terrified by assuming that how I felt right now would be how I would feel forever.
Instead, I decided to look at this positively: I don’t know why this is happening and I don’t like it, but I am having the chance now to practice what I learned.
Providing I wasn’t going to immediately run into some sort of mega disaster – a death, illness, or terrible accident … if everything is going super well in my life, how else was I going to practice what I learned in my ayahuasca ceremony?
So while this generally sucked, it gave me something to work with.
Let’s Go Over the Lessons Again
Let’s recap what I learned from my recent life experiences and ayahuasca:
- It’s okay to feel bad. Sometimes life makes you feel bad. It’s normal. It’s okay.
- Don’t resist the bad feelings. The more you resist the reality of what is happening and how you are feeling right then, the more of a struggle it’s going to be. Accept things as they are right now. That includes accepting that you feel bad.
- You don’t have to do anything to make the feelings go away. Just let them be there, observe them, and let them go. Breathe in, and breathe it all out and come back to your centre. Come back to the present moment.
- If you do take action towards making it go away (for example, trying a new routine to get rid of acne), that’s great, but do it from a place of acceptance of the current situation and let go of the expectations and attachments you have to the outcome
So when these anxiety attacks would come on, of course, my instinct was to do something to make them go away. Fidget and roll around. Get up out of bed and watch youtube all night so I didn’t have to feel it. Just completely freak out.
Instead, I practiced just letting the feelings sit there until they dissipated, or I fell asleep. I surrendered to the fact that while I don’t like it, it’s just how I feel right now in this moment. And I accept that.
Which was really hard, but I knew now that resisting them would make it all worse in the long run.
I knew that the more I resisted, the more anxiety would come. The stronger it would get, and the more power it would hold over me.
The Urge to Flee Was Still In Me
Room makeover!
Meanwhile, in the rest of my life, I’ve tried to keep myself busy with projects. I’ve been blogging, getting back in the kitchen (which is so great after eating so poorly in South America), and I have started really really enjoying working on the house.
At first, I was still getting occasional feelings of discomfort and boredom here and there, and the familiar urge give into them and run away from it all. Which is my default reaction when something is making me feel unpleasant.
Pack it in, sell the house, quit my biz, and become a climbing bum. Then I’ll be happy. Surely.
But with those too, I now knew better … I knew that they were transient, and that I have to surrender to the ebb and flow; the ups and downs of life.
I now know that working on my own happiness within, where I already am and with what I already have, is going to go a lot further than trying to find happiness from a new environment or a new situation.
I mean, don’t get me wrong – it’s totally fine to switch things up in your life, as long as you understand and accept that things are never perfect, and get rid of your expectations for how it will make you feel.
After all, as a permanent rock climbing bum, after not too long I’d just end up missing my home, my bed, my dogs, my kitchen, and my blog.
So again, I just let the feelings be there and waited until they passed, and didn’t do anything to make them go away, like I normally try to.
And It’s Working!!
Eventually with all of my efforts of non resistance and patience, things have slowly started to get better and better.
It took a while, but the anxiety started slowing down. At first that meant that it would still come on every night like clockwork, but I could just let it go a lot faster. I got better at not resisting it.
And eventually after a few months, it also meant that it just isn’t showing up at all anymore.
Sometimes it decides to, but I have gotten so good at being like ‘ah whatever, you can’t hurt me’, that it goes away within a few minutes instead of a few hours. It’s lost its power.
And in the rest of my life, the feelings of wanting to flee have also given up.
I’m really enjoying where I am now. I am loving my house and house projects, loving my husband, loving The Love Vitamin. Spring is here, which always feels like a rebirth for me.
A couple of our best friends are moving back into town next month (actually, right into our basement suite), and we have a big project in the works: we are starting a co-operative indoor rock climbing gym in our town.
After five years of working from home and being pretty dang hermitty, this is exactly what I need to get out of the house and get involved face to face with my community.
So life could still throw me some curveballs, but things seem to be looking up.
It’s been a difficult year but the struggle means that I have come to a much deeper understanding about myself, my personal patterns, and how to deal with the rough stuff that comes along.
Thanks for listening to my recent journey, I have been really enjoying sharing it with you, even if it wasn’t particularly acne related.
And I’ve hope you’ve found something in it that you can relate and apply to your own life 🙂
Next week we’ll get back to talking about skin for a while!
Valerie says
March 31, 2016 at 1:04 pmTracy! I get that!! It usually happens around PMS time where at the worst I start to feel like I’m going to fall into a black hole. I don’t quite even feel human. I’m starting to learn that the more we want to CONTROL and manipulate the experience, the worse it gets, and the more suffering. It’s nice to hear someone else describe that feeling because it’s very alienating when it happens. Thank you!
Tracy Raftl says
April 1, 2016 at 7:39 amIt’s pretty disturbing hey? I feel like that picture of the dark tunnel sums it up pretty well. The darkness of the anxiety isn’t something I’ve really ever experienced before, even at the height of the intense anxiety with my skin, it didn’t quite have the same ‘dark’ feeling to it.
Anyway, I’m glad you’ve had the same experience… realizing that the resistance makes it worse… even if it’s super hard just to let it sit there and not try to do anything to make it go away.
I remember reading about chronic anxiety well before any of this ever happened, and finding out that the only way that chronic anxiety sufferers really ever get better is to just stop resisting it. Stop trying to make it go away, accept that you are just going to feel shitty for a while, and wait. I always kept that in mind in case I ever found myself in such a situation, and yeah… turns out it’s very true! If I hadn’t known this, combined with that lesson being hugely reinforced during ayahuasca, I literally may have turned this whole thing into a full blown anxiety disorder. So, feeling very grateful right now!
Tereza says
April 1, 2016 at 12:11 amThanks for being so honest, I imagine it must take a lot of courage to be so open and vulnerable in front everyone. And the anxiety attacks sound horrifying! I’m glad you’re feeling better now. I really enjoyed the series and am looking forward to new skin related posts! 🙂
Tracy Raftl says
April 1, 2016 at 7:40 amThanks Tereza! Glad you enjoyed the series 🙂
Amy says
April 2, 2016 at 10:49 amI really want to get to the place that you’re in. I’m feeling so anxious and lost. I was on acne.org’s benzoyl regimen for a year and nearly completely clear. I decided to quit cold turkey (hind sight big mistake) and my whole face is covered with bumps and hyper pigmentation and scars. I have so much anxiety that I’ve started meditating, seeing a therapist, etc. It’s been over three months and I’m still struggling. My forehead is getting better but now my cheeks and chin are detoxing. I just really need a mental and emotional break from this. I keep switching up my routine because I can’t tell what’s working and what’s not, which I know isn’t good either.
So, breath in and breath out… Is what I’m working on.
Tracy Raftl says
April 3, 2016 at 8:57 amOh Amy, I so understand, when I was going through my severe acne… yeah I totally get it. And I know that the more intense the problem, the harder it is to just stay centred, and not freak the f out. But you know what, you’re going to get through this. Stay strong. It’s going to go away.
Amy says
April 3, 2016 at 9:04 amThanks Tracy. I have bad moments and okay moments. My bad moments usually come because I don’t know how long this will last, or I question whether this is the right thing to do, or I look in the mirror and compare it to how I used to look. I don’t feel like myself anymore, but in better moments, I remind myself that I’m not defined by my skin.
It’s just nuts, my skin is so bumpy, it doesn’t even look like acne. I really want to get to your mentality of just letting go.
Brianne says
April 5, 2016 at 9:17 pmThank you for sharing all you’ve gone through recently. It is truly beautiful.
As someone who went on a similar journey, I am very excited for you. There is so much more to come for you. So much more learning, and understanding, and compassion for yourself. A beautiful new unfolding is in store.
If I may, I’d like to offer you something that may settle you even more into your journey. It seems you are beautifully grasping what I think is the first step, accepting bad feelings and not fighting them. This can be such a helpful tool. The next step will be realizing that those “bad” feelings are not actually bad at all. Yes, they are normal, but more than that they are just as beautiful and powerful and worthy of your attention as the “good” ones.
Once you see that you are a human, experiencing the miraculous gift of emotions, you’ll be able to love each feeling in the same way. You are not here to feel good, you are here to feel. Our emotions are the colors with which we get to paint our lives. Feeling happy is not better than feeling lonely, just as yellow is not better than blue. Each serves it’s own purpose.
You are soon going to learn that in the same way that there is no reason to “let go” of purple, there is no reason to “let go” of those emotions that you’ve been labeling as bad. You are going begin to love them when they show up. You are going to be grateful that they are in your palette 🙂
I look forward to hearing more of your unfolding journey. XO
Tracy Raftl says
April 6, 2016 at 6:37 amWow, thanks Brianne! I didn’t even realize there was a next step! This definitely gave me some food for thought and something to work on…
Abril says
April 23, 2016 at 8:16 amHi Tracy, I’ve been following your blog for quite some time (since late 2011, I think? Or early 2012) and I loved these series. I can see how we are evolving into fully embracing our emotions without judgement of being good or bad, they just are. I used to have hormonal acne, now I have some rosacea on my checks but I now there’s an underlying emotion trying to be acknowledged. I also find myself resisting, I’m no pro or master but I appreciate your journey as a whole the “good” and the “bad”, you are inspiring ?
Amy says
April 23, 2016 at 10:38 amGreat post. If you get a chance, read the book Skin Deep. It’s free online and talks about digging deep to uncover emotional issues that cause skin challenges.
Tracy Raftl says
April 24, 2016 at 7:26 amSkin Deep is such a great resource!
Tracy Raftl says
April 24, 2016 at 7:26 amHi to a long time follower 🙂 Glad you enjoyed this series Abril!
D.D. says
March 6, 2018 at 6:51 amGosh, I lost my comment here because the captcha thing told me to go back and fill it in again. I hadn’t copied it before clicking the submit button, so it’s gone. Grr.
Briefly, I had asked if you are sure that you are done with ayahuasca – or that it is entirely done with you?
It sounds like it left you at an incomplete point in the process — if you have more anxiety now than you did before. ?
Do some people do a 4th night of the medicine, or do another 3-night experience?
Do some people do some one-on-one counseling sessions after they get home, to work through issues that were brought up by the ayahuasca process? Have you considered doing that?
—
By the way, on your photo caption (on the prior post) under the photo of the bathroom at the retreat center, which ends in, “unfortunately very well equated”, the last word should be “acquainted”. 🙂
Tracy Raftl says
March 6, 2018 at 11:40 amHi DD! Thanks for all your comments 🙂 Sorry about the captcha, that’s a new development — I’ve turned it off.
Also sorry about the missing dates, also a new development that I will rethink! So yes, these blog posts were from early 2016, my ayahuasca ceremonies were in December 2015.
Afterwards, I struggled with the nightly fear and anxiety and sometimes panic attacks for about a year or more. When I wrote this post, it appears to me that I had logically learned all the lessons I was supposed to learn, but I still hadn’t completely “got” it in practice. The anxiety sometimes eased up (like when I wrote this post) but it did come back – it was always still there, lurking in the shadows. Because I was still resisting it, really.
Eventually I found the answer that really solved it for me — it led me to understanding anxiety and the brain and how this type of anxiety works.
The fear centre of your brain stores traumatic memories and, so it can make you anxious next time something associated with the trauma happens. For example, if you were sexually assaulted while a certain song was playing, you would probably get super anxious next time you heard that song before you could even think about why you were anxious. It just happens out of nowhere. It makes you freak out and get you into fight or flight mode — it’s just biological, it’s trying to keep you safe from danger but to us it’s just horrible and confusing! For me the trigger was evening, as it was getting dark, as this was when we would go into the ceremonies. So I would get horribly anxious almost every night out of nowhere and not really be able to help it.
But, basically, if you resist and fight the anxiety or do things to try and make it stop (which you naturally do because it feels terrible), it tells your brain that you are “fighting and flighting” from the so called danger, which to your brain takes to mean that it was right, and that there is in fact danger here. So it keeps your anxiety going! What I had to learn is that resisting it in this case even means doing something like breathing deeply to make it go away. You are still telling your brain it needs to go away, therefore it’s still getting the message that it is dangerous and the anxiety should continue.
I finally found out this was what was happening and I learned the trick was to stay completely where you are, don’t do anything else except really focus on the sensations of the fear — the heart pounding, the scary feelings — all the things I really hated about the experience, and invite them to get worse. This effectively tells your brain that that there is no danger and so the anxiety just goes away. Keep doing this, it stops your anxiety completely. One week of this, I stopped having the nightly anxiety and haven’t had a panic attack since (this was in April 2017). That darkness is no longer lurking like it was before.
I think this was just something I had to learn, Ayahuasca kicked me in the face with it and I didn’t get it then, so I got the gift that kept on giving after I got home — until I finally really, truly got it!! 🙂 haha but now that I have learned the secret, it’s like duh —- the more you struggle and try to resist painful feelings, the more they hurt you. It’s ok to feel bad. You don’t have to react or fix every emotion. — exactly what I wrote in this post, but now it just really makes sense to me in practice.
Learning this and going through that is really helping in my new career as a mind-body coach 😉 — Honestly, I don’t know where I wrote back then that I wanted to be a mind-body coach, because this seems like this was way before that idea even came to my mind. Foreshadowing I guess! But I have spent the last 1/2 year getting certified in coaching (actually today I am fully certified! woohoo! Not from Martha Beck but she is someone I’ve learned of on my journey). And I am on the verge of launching my first mind-body-skin coaching program.
Anyway — have a great day DD. Love x